Fake Meltdown/Spectre Patch Installs Malware

Cybercriminals are already taking advantage of the massive attention the recently detailed Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws have received, in an attempt to trick users into installing malware instead, Malwarebytes warns.

Made public in early January, Meltdown and Spectre are two new side-channel attack methods against modern processors and are said to impact billions of devices. Based on vulnerabilities at the CPU level, the flaws allow malicious apps to access data as it is being processed, including passwords, photos, documents, emails, and the like.

Chip makers and vendors were alerted on the bugs last year, and some started working on patches for their users several months ago, but waited for a coordinated public disclosure set for last week. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Canonical, and IBM are just a few of the vendors that have already deployed patches.

Soon after the patches began rolling out, however, attacks taking advantage of the Meltdown/Spectre fever surfaced. One of them, Malwarebytes reports, is targeting German users with the SmokeLoader malware.

The attack was spotted soon after the German authorities issued a warning on phishing emails trying to take advantage of infamous bugs started to appear.

The emails appeared to come from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), and Malwarebytes discovered a domain that also posed as the BSI website. Recently registered, the SSL-enabled phishing site isn’t affiliated with a legitimate or official government entity, but attempts to trick users into installing malware.

The website is offering an information page that supposedly provides links to resources about Meltdown and Spectre, bug also links to a ZIP archive (Intel-AMD-SecurityPatch-11-01bsi.zip) that contains malware instead of the promised security patch.

Once a user downloads and runs the file, the SmokeLoader malware, which is capable of downloading and running additional payloads, is installed. The security researchers have observed the threat attempting to connect to various domains and sending encrypted information.

By analyzing the SSL certificate used by the fraudulent domain, the security researchers discovered other properties associated with the .bid domain, including a German template for a fake Adobe Flash Player update.

The security researchers have already contacted Comodo and CloudFlare to report the fraudulent website, and the domain stopped resolving within minutes after CloudFlare was informed on the issue.

“Online criminals are notorious for taking advantage of publicized events and rapidly exploiting them, typically via phishing campaigns. This particular one is interesting because people were told to apply a patch, which is exactly what the crooks are offering under disguise,” Malwarebytes concludes.